OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
A New High Energy Efficiency Scheme Based on Two-Dimension Resource Blocks in Wireless Communication Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2022
Year: 2022

Energy efficiency (EE) plays a key role in future wireless communication network and it is easily to achieve high EE performance in low SNR regime. In this paper, a new high EE scheme is proposed for a MIMO wireless communication system working in the low SNR regime by using two dimension resource allocation. First, we define the high EE area based on the relationship between the transmission power and the SNR. To meet the constraint of the high EE area, both frequency and space dimension are needed. Besides analysing them separately, we decided to consider frequency and space dimensions as a unit and proposed a two-dimension scheme. Furthermore, considering communication in the high EE area may cause decline of the communication quality, we add quality-of-service(QoS) constraint into the consideration and derive the corresponding EE performance based on the effective capacity. We also derive an approximate expression to simplify the complex EE performance. Finally, our numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
"That's so cute!": The CARE Dataset for Affective Response Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Social media plays an increasing role in our communication with friends and family, and our consumption of information and entertainment. Hence, to design effective ranking functions for posts on social media, it would be useful to predict the affective response to a post (e.g., whether the user is likely to be humored, inspired, angered, informed). Similar to work on emotion recognition (which focuses on the affect of the publisher of the post), the traditional approach to recognizing affective response would involve an expensive investment in human annotation of training data. We introduce CARE$_{db}$, a dataset of 230k social media posts annotated according to 7 affective responses using the Common Affective Response Expression (CARE) method. The CARE method is a means of leveraging the signal that is present in comments that are posted in response to a post, providing high-precision evidence about the affective response of the readers to the post without human annotation. Unlike human annotation, the annotation process we describe here can be iterated upon to expand the coverage of the method, particularly for new affective responses. We present experiments that demonstrate that the CARE annotations compare favorably with crowd-sourced annotations. Finally, we use CARE$_{db}$ to train competitive BERT-based models for predicting affective response as well as emotion detection, demonstrating the utility of the dataset for related tasks.
Quadruped Capturability and Push Recovery via a Switched-Systems Characterization of Dynamic Balance
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2022
Year: 2022

This paper studies capturability and push recovery for quadrupedal locomotion. Despite the rich literature on capturability analysis and push recovery control for legged robots, existing tools are developed mainly for bipeds or humanoids. Distinct quadrupedal features such as point contacts and multiple swinging legs prevent direct application of these methods. To address this gap, we propose a switched systems model for quadruped dynamics, and instantiate the abstract viability concept for quadrupedal locomotion with a time-based gait. Capturability is characterized through a novel specification of dynamically balanced states that addresses the time-varying nature of quadrupedal locomotion and balance. A linear inverted pendulum (LIP) model is adopted to demonstrate the theory and show how the newly developed quadrupedal capturability can be used in motion planning for quadrupedal push recovery. We formulate and solve an explicit model predictive control (EMPC) problem whose optimal solution fully characterizes quadrupedal capturability with the LIP. Given this analysis, an optimization-based planning scheme is devised for determining footsteps and center of mass references during push recovery. To validate the effectiveness of the overall framework, we conduct numerous simulation and hardware experiments. Simulation results illustrate the necessity of considering dynamic balance for quadrupedal capturability, and the significant improvement in disturbance rejection with the proposed strategy. Experimental validations on a replica of the Mini Cheetah quadruped demonstrate an up to 100% improvement as compared with state-of-the-art.
Learning to Simulate Unseen Physical Systems with Graph Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Simulation of the dynamics of physical systems is essential to the development of both science and engineering. Recently there is an increasing interest in learning to simulate the dynamics of physical systems using neural networks. However, existing approaches fail to generalize to physical substances not in the training set, such as liquids with different viscosities or elastomers with different elasticities. Here we present a machine learning method embedded with physical priors and material parameters, which we term as "Graph-based Physics Engine" (GPE), to efficiently model the physical dynamics of different substances in a wide variety of scenarios. We demonstrate that GPE can generalize to materials with different properties not seen in the training set and perform well from single-step predictions to multi-step roll-out simulations. In addition, introducing the law of momentum conservation in the model significantly improves the efficiency and stability of learning, allowing convergence to better models with fewer training steps.
GTac: A Biomimetic Tactile Sensor with Skin-like Heterogeneous Force Feedback for Robots
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2022
Year: 2022

The tactile sensing capabilities of human hands are essential in performing daily activities. Simultaneously perceiving normal and shear forces via the mechanoreceptors integrated into the hands enables humans to achieve daily tasks like grasping delicate objects. In this paper, we design and fabricate a novel biomimetic tactile sensor with skin-like heterogeneity that perceives normal and shear contact forces simultaneously. It mimics the multilayers of mechanoreceptors by combining an extrinsic layer (piezoresistive sensors) and an intrinsic layer (a Hall sensor) so that it can perform estimation of contact force directions, locations, and joint-level torque. By integrating our sensors, a robotic gripper can obtain contact force feedback at fingertips; accordingly, robots can perform challenging tasks, such as tweezers usage, and egg grasping. This insightful sensor design can be customized and applied in different areas of robots and provide them with heterogeneous force sensing, potentially supporting robotics in acquiring skin-like tactile feedback.
Design of magnetic coupling-based anti-biofouling mechanism for underwater optical sensors
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2022
Year: 2022

Water monitoring is crucial for environmental monitoring, transportation, energy and telecommunication. One of the main problems in aquatic environmental monitoring is biofouling. The simplest method among the current antifouling strategies is the use of wiper technologies like brushes and wipers which apply mechanical pressure. In designing built-in strategies however, manufacturers usually build the sensor around the biofouling system. The current state-of-the-art is a fully integrated central wiper in the sensor that enables cleaning of all probes mounted on the sonde. Improvements in antifouling strategies lag rapid advancements in sensor technologies such as in miniaturization, specialization, and costs. Hence, improving built-in designs by decreasing size and complexity will decrease maintenance and overall costs. This design is targeted for the EU project Robocoenosis since bio-hybrid systems in this project incorporate living organisms. This technology targets selective proliferation of the organisms which only prevents biofilms on components where they are unwanted. Beyond this, the use of autonomous activation based on image processing may likely be advantageous for minimizing the need for human inspection and maintenance. In addition to Robocoenosis, we also aim at incorporating this design in another project entitled Heterogeneous Swarm of Underwater Autonomous Vehicles where a swarm of heterogeneous underwater robotic fish is being developed.
Transfer Learning In Differential Privacy's Hybrid-Model
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

The hybrid-model (Avent et al 2017) in Differential Privacy is a an augmentation of the local-model where in addition to N local-agents we are assisted by one special agent who is in fact a curator holding the sensitive details of n additional individuals. Here we study the problem of machine learning in the hybrid-model where the n individuals in the curators dataset are drawn from a different distribution than the one of the general population (the local-agents). We give a general scheme -- Subsample-Test-Reweigh -- for this transfer learning problem, which reduces any curator-model DP-learner to a hybrid-model learner in this setting using iterative subsampling and reweighing of the n examples held by the curator based on a smooth variation of the Multiplicative-Weights algorithm (introduced by Bun et al, 2020). Our scheme has a sample complexity which relies on the chi-squared divergence between the two distributions. We give worst-case analysis bounds on the sample complexity required for our private reduction. Aiming to reduce said sample complexity, we give two specific instances our sample complexity can be drastically reduced (one instance is analyzed mathematically, while the other - empirically) and pose several directions for follow-up work.
Alpa: Automating Inter- and Intra-Operator Parallelism for Distributed Deep Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Alpa automates model-parallel training of large deep learning (DL) models by generating execution plans that unify data, operator, and pipeline parallelism. Existing model-parallel training systems either require users to manually create a parallelization plan or automatically generate one from a limited space of model parallelism configurations. They do not suffice to scale out complex DL models on distributed compute devices. Alpa distributes the training of large DL models by viewing parallelisms as two hierarchical levels: inter-operator and intra-operator parallelisms. Based on it, Alpa constructs a new hierarchical space for massive model-parallel execution plans. Alpa designs a number of compilation passes to automatically derive efficient parallel execution plans at each parallelism level. Alpa implements an efficient runtime to orchestrate the two-level parallel execution on distributed compute devices. Our evaluation shows Alpa generates parallelization plans that match or outperform hand-tuned model-parallel training systems even on models they are designed for. Unlike specialized systems, Alpa also generalizes to models with heterogeneous architectures and models without manually-designed plans. Alpa's source code is publicly available at https://github.com/alpa-projects/alpa
The FreshPRINCE: A Simple Transformation Based Pipeline Time Series Classifier
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

There have recently been significant advances in the accuracy of algorithms proposed for time series classification (TSC). However, a commonly asked question by real world practitioners and data scientists less familiar with the research topic, is whether the complexity of the algorithms considered state of the art is really necessary. Many times the first approach suggested is a simple pipeline of summary statistics or other time series feature extraction approaches such as TSFresh, which in itself is a sensible question; in publications on TSC algorithms generalised for multiple problem types, we rarely see these approaches considered or compared against. We experiment with basic feature extractors using vector based classifiers shown to be effective with continuous attributes in current state-of-the-art time series classifiers. We test these approaches on the UCR time series dataset archive, looking to see if TSC literature has overlooked the effectiveness of these approaches. We find that a pipeline of TSFresh followed by a rotation forest classifier, which we name FreshPRINCE, performs best. It is not state of the art, but it is significantly more accurate than nearest neighbour with dynamic time warping, and represents a reasonable benchmark for future comparison.
Guided Bug Crush: Assist Manual GUI Testing of Android Apps via Hint Moves
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2022
Year: 2022

Mobile apps are indispensable for people's daily life. Complementing with automated GUI testing, manual testing is the last line of defence for app quality. However, the repeated actions and easily missing of functionalities make manual testing time-consuming and inefficient. Inspired by the game candy crush with flashy candies as hint moves for players, we propose an approach named NaviDroid for navigating testers via highlighted next operations for more effective and efficient testing. Within NaviDroid, we construct an enriched state transition graph with the triggering actions as the edges for two involved states. Based on it, we utilize the dynamic programming algorithm to plan the exploration path, and augment the GUI with visualized hints for testers to quickly explore untested activities and avoid duplicate explorations. The automated experiments demonstrate the high coverage and efficient path planning of NaviDroid and a user study further confirms its usefulness. The NaviDroid can help us develop more robust software that works in more mission-critical settings, not only by performing more thorough testing with the same effort that has been put in before, but also by integrating these techniques into different parts of development pipeline.
Label uncertainty-guided multi-stream model for disease screening
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

The annotation of disease severity for medical image datasets often relies on collaborative decisions from multiple human graders. The intra-observer variability derived from individual differences always persists in this process, yet the influence is often underestimated. In this paper, we cast the intra-observer variability as an uncertainty problem and incorporate the label uncertainty information as guidance into the disease screening model to improve the final decision. The main idea is dividing the images into simple and hard cases by uncertainty information, and then developing a multi-stream network to deal with different cases separately. Particularly, for hard cases, we strengthen the network's capacity in capturing the correct disease features and resisting the interference of uncertainty. Experiments on a fundus image-based glaucoma screening case study show that the proposed model outperforms several baselines, especially in screening hard cases.
Leveraging Inlier Correspondences Proportion for Point Cloud Registration
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

In feature-learning based point cloud registration, the correct correspondence construction is vital for the subsequent transformation estimation. However, it is still a challenge to extract discriminative features from point cloud, especially when the input is partial and composed by indistinguishable surfaces (planes, smooth surfaces, etc.). As a result, the proportion of inlier correspondences that precisely match points between two unaligned point clouds is beyond satisfaction. Motivated by this, we devise several techniques to promote feature-learning based point cloud registration performance by leveraging inlier correspondences proportion: a pyramid hierarchy decoder to characterize point features in multiple scales, a consistent voting strategy to maintain consistent correspondences and a geometry guided encoding module to take geometric characteristics into consideration. Based on the above techniques, We build our Geometry-guided Consistent Network (GCNet), and challenge GCNet by indoor, outdoor and object-centric synthetic datasets. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that GCNet outperforms the state-of-the-art methods and the techniques used in GCNet is model-agnostic, which could be easily migrated to other feature-based deep learning or traditional registration methods, and dramatically improve the performance. The code is available at https://github.com/zhulf0804/NgeNet.
Detecting Owner-member Relationship with Graph Convolution Network in Fisheye Camera System
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2022
Year: 2022

The owner-member relationship between wheels and vehicles contributes significantly to the 3D perception of vehicles, especially in embedded environments. However, to leverage this relationship we must face two major challenges: i) Traditional IoU-based heuristics have difficulty handling occluded traffic congestion scenarios. ii) The effectiveness and applicability of the solution in a vehicle-mounted system is difficult. To address these issues, we propose an innovative relationship prediction method, DeepWORD, by designing a graph convolutional network (GCN). Specifically, to improve the information richness, we use feature maps with local correlation as input to the nodes. Subsequently, we introduce a graph attention network (GAT) to dynamically correct the a priori estimation bias. Finally, we designed a dataset as a large-scale benchmark which has annotated owner-member relationship, called WORD. In the experiments we learned that the proposed method achieved state-of-the-art accuracy and real-time performance. The WORD dataset is made publicly available at https://github.com/NamespaceMain/ownermember-relationship-dataset.
Protum: A New Method For Prompt Tuning Based on "[MASK]"
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2022
Year: 2022

Recently, prompt tuning \cite{lester2021power} has gradually become a new paradigm for NLP, which only depends on the representation of the words by freezing the parameters of pre-trained language models (PLMs) to obtain remarkable performance on downstream tasks. It maintains the consistency of Masked Language Model (MLM) \cite{devlin2018bert} task in the process of pre-training, and avoids some issues that may happened during fine-tuning. Naturally, we consider that the "[MASK]" tokens carry more useful information than other tokens because the model combines with context to predict the masked tokens. Among the current prompt tuning methods, there will be a serious problem of random composition of the answer tokens in prediction when they predict multiple words so that they have to map tokens to labels with the help verbalizer. In response to the above issue, we propose a new \textbf{Pro}mpt \textbf{Tu}ning based on "[\textbf{M}ASK]" (\textbf{Protum}) method in this paper, which constructs a classification task through the information carried by the hidden layer of "[MASK]" tokens and then predicts the labels directly rather than the answer tokens. At the same time, we explore how different hidden layers under "[MASK]" impact on our classification model on many different data sets. Finally, we find that our \textbf{Protum} can achieve much better performance than fine-tuning after continuous pre-training with less time consumption. Our model facilitates the practical application of large models in NLP.
ERASE: Energy Efficient Task Mapping and Resource Management for Work Stealing Runtimes
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2022
Year: 2022

Parallel applications often rely on work stealing schedulers in combination with fine-grained tasking to achieve high performance and scalability. However, reducing the total energy consumption in the context of work stealing runtimes is still challenging, particularly when using asymmetric architectures with different types of CPU cores. A common approach for energy savings involves dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) wherein throttling is carried out based on factors like task parallelism, stealing relations and task criticality. This paper makes the following observations: (i) leveraging DVFS on a per-task basis is impractical when using fine-grained tasking and in environments with cluster/chip-level DVFS; (ii) task moldability, wherein a single task can execute on multiple threads/cores via work-sharing, can help to reduce energy consumption; and (iii) mismatch between tasks and assigned resources (i.e.~core type and number of cores) can detrimentally impact energy consumption. In this paper, we propose ERASE (EneRgy Aware SchedulEr), an intra-application task scheduler on top of work stealing runtimes that aims to reduce the total energy consumption of parallel applications. It achieves energy savings by guiding scheduling decisions based on per-task energy consumption predictions of different resource configurations. In addition, ERASE is capable of adapting to both given static frequency settings and externally controlled DVFS. Overall, ERASE achieves up to 31% energy savings and improves performance by 44% on average, compared to the state-of-the-art DVFS-based schedulers.
Backdoors Stuck At The Frontdoor: Multi-Agent Backdoor Attacks That Backfire
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2022
Year: 2022

Malicious agents in collaborative learning and outsourced data collection threaten the training of clean models. Backdoor attacks, where an attacker poisons a model during training to successfully achieve targeted misclassification, are a major concern to train-time robustness. In this paper, we investigate a multi-agent backdoor attack scenario, where multiple attackers attempt to backdoor a victim model simultaneously. A consistent backfiring phenomenon is observed across a wide range of games, where agents suffer from a low collective attack success rate. We examine different modes of backdoor attack configurations, non-cooperation / cooperation, joint distribution shifts, and game setups to return an equilibrium attack success rate at the lower bound. The results motivate the re-evaluation of backdoor defense research for practical environments.
Differential Polarization Shift Keying Through Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2022
Year: 2022

We propose a novel reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) encoded information transmission scheme for a line-of-sight environment. A RIS fed with data modulates the information on impinging waves emitted from an external source in the states of polarization (SoP) of the scattered waves by performing a novel differential polarization shift keying. In particular, the information is encoded in the change of the SoP over two successive scattering slots. The proposed scheme is immune to the SoP fluctuations in the wireless channel which allows for non-coherent detection at the receiver.